This is the rule of all struggling retail operations: when the customer asks if he can count on you to deliver, say “Yes.”

Doesn’t matter if what he’s asking is impossible. Eventually, you have nothing to lose by promising. It’s that or the pit.

Though the season has three games yet to run, the Raptors are already at that point for next season.

Conceptually, the end of this season is pre-season for next year. What else do they have to play for? Ninth in the East? What would ninth place mean for this team?

“Nothing,” said coach Dwane Casey, quite correctly.

To their credit, his team isn’t playing like that just now.

Friday was another of their surprising late-season shockers, taking advantage of an undermanned Chicago team. The Bulls went to overtime in New York on Thursday. They arrived in Toronto tired and cranky.

Eschewing the perimeter altogether (they didn’t make a three-point shot the entire game), the Raptors pounded the Bulls inside.

As usual in this building, the brightest spot for Chicago was the play of Carlos Boozer. There never was any real truth to the Boozer-for-Andrea-Bargnani talk. But the injured Italian showed up on the bench clean-shaven for the first time in memory. Planning something? A trip, perhaps? It’s not wrong for you to dream.

Boozer was at his “lollipop shot and a shoulder to the head” best, but he was forced into a lot of contact, and subsequent foul trouble. He didn’t last the length of the game.

This left the other beanpoles and weak sisters on the Chicago roster running too much and absorbing too much punishment.

The game shifted when Richard Hamilton was ejected for elbowing DeMar DeRozan in the face. Hamilton may argue that he was goaded into it by DeRozan’s laying on of hands. If so, that’s not much of an argument.

Chicago imploded emotionally at that point, hacking vigorously and complaining outrageously. By the end, even Kyle Lowry seemed affronted by their cheek.

Toronto took the lead near the end of the second quarter and didn’t relinquish it. They won 97-88.

The Raptors were awash in heroes, prime among them rookie Quincy Acy (10 points, nine rebounds in 35 minutes).

The up-and-down Acy is Terrence Ross through a glass darkly, a tank to Ross’ hovercraft. They are far from finished products, but the pair of them consistently draw the eye on the court. Neither may be the future, but they’re a pretty entertaining present.

This of course assumes that none of what happens over the next week (or the last two) really mattered. Once the prospect of a nosedive into the off-season was negated, it no longer did.

Ninth place now seems realistic. If so, it means this much at least — mitigated failure. It means a chance for all involved to take one last shot at getting it right next year. For right now, it means a chance to say, “Warned ya.”

“When we went into the season, I remember saying we’re going to knock on the door for the playoffs. I don’t think I’ve ever said we’re going to make the playoffs,” Casey said.

That’s exactly right. He said that. Over and over again, all involved delivered some variation of, “The playoffs is our goal, but that’s all it is — a goal.”

“If you look at the predictions early in the season, we’re close to where everybody predicted us,” Casey said, which is also true. “I’m not happy. I’m not satisified. We’re taking steps. Nobody said it was going to be fast, but we’re not satisfied with where we are.”

That would put everyone in agreement.

There are many important but ultimately grinding things going on in the team right now: evaluation of the fringe players, consolidation of the key pieces, reappraisal of everyone up and down the coaching staff. That matters internally. It makes no never mind to those who are still watching. They’re already onto next year.

At some point in the coming days, promises will have to be made about that. Casey was offered the chance to give some sort of playoff guarantee on Friday.

“Let me have a couple of days to digest that. Of course, next year with the growth of our team, the growth of (the current) players, that should be our next step. That’s going to come,” he said.

If you pull those two sentences apart, that’s sort of a guarantee. All involved will have to do better. Casey and GM Bryan Colangelo will each return with one year remaining on their deals. Right now, there are no draft picks. Bargnani will be gone. Lowry will be in a contract year.

Next year is the end of many things, and so, a perfect moment to begin promising the moon. That needs to happen. The customers are owed guarantees.

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